About Finca Las Nieves
An Organic Coffee Farm In The Oaxaca Cloud Forest

Finca las Nieves is a 1,000 acre organic coffee farm located in the Oaxacan cloud forest above Puerto Escondido at an elevation of 4,000 feet. Like many historic coffee farms in the Oaxaca Chatino region, Finca Las Nieves had fallen into neglect, abandoned because it would have cost more to harvest the beans than the price they woud have fetched on the market. "Our trip to Finca Las Nieves was memorable" - Read our customer comments.

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Early Mexico Coffee History: Coffee arrived in Mexico from Cuba at the beginning of the 19th Century and was cultivated in the state of Veracruz. When the world market for cochineal dye collapsed with the advent of aniline dyes, Oaxaca looked to coffee as a possible substitute crop. The first Oaxaca coffee farms were founded in the 1870's, in the area around el Cerro de Pluma, "Feather Mountain", in the Zapotec hill country above and beyond Pochutla.

As it turned out conditions in the Oaxacan coastal range couldn't have been better for coffee cultivation: the perfect altitude, warm coastal breezes, forested slopes to provide the necessary shade. Soon coffee production extended throughout the coastal range into the Chatino region extending up to Juquila. "Pluma" coffee is Mexico's best-known denomination of export coffee. The original Pluma region escaped the devastation wrought upon the Chatino plantations by the 1997 storms which caused many Chatino coffee farms to be abandoned.

However producing high quality organic beans is very labor intensive and costly in its own right. For example, only the ripe, red cherries have the potential for producing top quality coffee, but not all the cherries ripen at once, so pickers must work same trees as many as three times a season. After picking there are other meticulously executed steps in bean processing, including soaking, pulping, fermenting, rinsing, sun drying, hulling and grading, Organic, mountain-grown Chatino coffee, known by the denomination "Santa Catarina" or "Juquila", according to many experts, has surpassed Pluma in excellence.

Biology: The Coffea plant belongs to a genus of ten species of flowering plants of the family Rubiaceae. It is an evergreen shrub or small tree that may grow 5 meters (16.40 ft) tall when unpruned. The leaves are dark green and glossy, usually 10–15 centimeters (3.9–1.9 in) long and 6.0 centimeters (2.4 in) wide. It produces clusters of fragrant, white flowers that bloom simultaneously. The fruit berry is oval, about 1.5 centimeters (0.6 in) long, and green when immature, but ripens to yellow, then crimson, becoming black on drying. Each berry usually contains two seeds, but in 5–10 per cent of the berries, there is only one; these are peaberries. Berries ripen in 7–9 months. The coffee plant is native to subtropical Africa and southern Asia.